Does your child love to help in the kitchen? Are they always asking to stir the bowl or do they enjoy playing with your pots and pans?

                Children’s curiosity tends to lead them to the kitchen. It is a place where we spend a lot of our day whether that is cooking, spending time with the family or digging through the pantry for that yummy treat. Since we spend so much time in the kitchen, it is easy to teach our children and encourage them to explore with us. But how can you incorporate learning into the kitchen?

Math Skills

You can help your child learn math in the kitchen by doing simple things such as counting out the blueberries that you add to your morning yogurt or measuring how much milk you have to add to the cupcakes. You can teach fractions when scooping out flour or when cutting a pizza into slices.

Sensory Exploration

Everyone is familiar with taste, from the yummy to the gross flavors. Babies are very familiar with this- spitting out those split peas and eating all the applesauce! Cooking and experimenting with different flavors are a great way to get your picky eater to try something new. Sensory experiences aren’t just limited to taste. We all love the feeling of dough between our fingers, the sound of a timer letting you know that those delicious smelling cookies are ready to eat, and the sight of those bright red strawberries!

Literacy Skills

Read the recipe out loud to encourage basic literacy skills. This will introduce your child to new vocabulary words, while following instructions will help your child practice using those little ears. Listening comprehension is fundamental to literacy!

Social-Emotional Development

One of the best benefits of cooking is watching the confidence. Creating a meal from scratch reinforces that “can do” attitude and giving your child that positive feedback and praising their efforts, improves a child’s self-esteem.

                When working in the kitchen with your little one, make sure to introduce them to kitchen safety and monitor them at all times. Kitchens are filled with so many ways to explore in a safe and positive way!

                At Crème de la Crème, our Culinary Education program is implemented in our S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Lab or Culinary Kitchen (varies by location) and it encompasses many different areas of development. Crème students are learning about how different ingredients react with one another (Science), how to use a clock to time how long something is baking for (Technology), how to build a gingerbread house (Engineering), how to use your imagination to plate a healthy snack (Art), and how to measure out ingredients (Math). We love watching our students learn with this fun, hands-on learning!

Let’s get cooking!